But where should Rockstar take “Grand Theft Auto” next? Milwaukee? The Moon? That’s the real question on everybody’s mind, and we here at Movoto Real Estate Blog think, nay, we know, we’ve found the best answer.

We already proved how much crime pays with our previous trip into the world of GTA, so we’re lending our expertise to help Rockstar make what could be a hard decision quite easy. Are you ready for it? Sitting down? Brace yourself.“Grand Theft Auto 6” needs to be set in Portland, OR.

Yup. Portland. And here’s why.

How Portland Compares to GTA 5

To be fair, Portland wasn’t our first choice either. We looked at several cities, trying to see which one would be a great place to steal cars and run over hookers in. It’s hard to argue with numbers, and the numbers show that not only is Portland a great choice for the next GTA, but also that Portland probably would have actually been a better choice than that lame-sauce city Los Whateveros.

Guns & Ammo

Let’s get right down to brass tacks. What’s one of your most important tools in GTA? Guns? Yeah, we thought so. Gotta have that boom-boom fire power amirite?!? Well, wouldn’t you know that Portland actually has almost as many gun stores as Los Santos. Yup. Without shooting distance, even.

9 gun stores fall within the city of Portland. Los Santos? Only had 11. Sure, if you want to be the low-rung grunt at the bottom of the crime totem pole, those 11 gun stores will probably do it. Want to be a bad ass? Try shopping in Portland.

Strip Clubs

For those of you looking for more, uhhh, exotic wares, you’ll be happy to learn that Portland has plenty of places to stuff those extra singles you’ll be raking in.

How many? Oh, just 81. Yes, 81 different strip clubs just waiting for you to toss some extra cash around. So have no fears, you’ll still find plenty of adult activity in Portland, if you’re into that type of thing.

The Fuzz

Source: Flickr user Squid Vicious

Portland beat out Los Santos in almost every single category we compared. The only one that was hugely in Los Santos’s favor was police stations, where Portland only had 6 to the game’s 12. But of all the categories to be lower, this is probably the one you all care least about, right?

Local Flavor

And of course, this is Portland we’re talking about. You need that local city smell. That special flavor that makes each GTA a little bit better and a little more distinct than the last. For Portland, we felt it was oh-so appropriate to include bike shops and coffee shops (we almost included sweater shops, but that seemed a step too far).

Of course, on the hipster scale, we expected Portland to beat GTA 5, but we didn’t expect it to take Los Santos to school. There are 10 coffee shops in Los Santos. Not bad. But… how many does Portland have within city limits?

Try six hundred and thirty seven. 637. Try reading it again in case that didn’t exactly sink in, I’ll wait.

You could go to a different coffee shop every day for almost two years. And all those coffee shops are just waiting for some local drug kingpin to come take them over and use them as a front for a blue-colored meth operation…

Anything Else Would Be Criminal

We rest our case. Portland would be the PERFECT city for the next “Grand Theft Auto” game. It has the personality, the intrigue, and frankly it might be more fun to visit Portland digitally and not risk running into all of those old college friends who are trying to make the rest of the world move there. Might we also suggest a preorder bonus of a sweater and a coffee mug? Just kidding.

Methodology

Using Yelp, we narrowed our results for each category just within the city limits of Portland and then looked at the total number of results. Not quite rocket science.

The GTA 5 stuff was much easier. Big thanks to the online and interactive GTA 5 map, which gave us our counts and locations of each of the different categories. We had to count the dots ourselves, but that really wasn’t a big deal.

6 Comments

I was thinking that Erie County and Niagara County, NY would be an interesting area. It has Buffalo and Niagara Falls, AT LEAST 7 gun stores, some number of strip clubs, and numerous police stations (five just in the city of Buffalo). It has a number of cities, suburbs, and rural areas, as well as plenty of ethnic diversity… and damn good chicken wings, among a multitude of things.